Entropic Creation: Religious Contexts of Thermodynamics and Cosmology

Description

pp. 100-101 (PDF pp. 107-108) are on Fr. Secchi, S.J., pioneer of stellar spectroscopy

Cantor consulted Franzelin, S.J. p. 94 (PDF p. 91) regarding the reality of ∞:

pp. 94-5 (PDF pp. 101-2):

Cantor suggested that Thomas Aquinas’ rejection of the actual infinite should not be understood in an absolute sense, as was it impossible, but only in the sense that it was an improbable concept. His correspondent Gutberlet, who expressed concern about the theological significance of the transfinite numbers, accepted Cantor’s argument and so did the Austrian-born cardinal Johannes Franzelin, a leading Jesuit philosopher and theologian whom Cantor consulted.166 According to Gutberlet, the actual infinite existed in the absolute mind of God, but only in this ideal or non-physical sense (Cantor maintained that the transfinite also existed in concreto). As mentioned, Gutberlet categorically denied that the number of objects in the physical universe could be infinite. His arguments were criticized by Isenkrahe, who found them to be unconvincing and objected to his theological use of infinite quantities.167

For over three millennia, most people could understand the universe only in terms of myth, religion, and philosophy. Between 1920 and 1970, cosmology transformed into a branch of physics. With this remarkably rapid change came a theory that would finally lend empirical support to many long-held beliefs about the origins and development of the entire universe: the theory of the big bang. In this book, Helge Kragh presents the development of scientific cosmology for the first time as a historical event, one that embroiled many famous scientists in a controversy over the very notion of an evolving universe with a beginning in time. In rich detail he examines how the big-bang theory drew inspiration from and eventually triumphed over rival views, mainly the steady-state theory and its concept of a stationary universe of infinite age.In the 1920s, Alexander Friedmann and Georges Lema�tre showed that Einstein's general relativity equations possessed solutions for a universe expanding in time. Kragh follows the story from here, showing how the big-bang theory evolved, from Edwin Hubble's observation that most galaxies are receding from us, to the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation. Sir Fred Hoyle proposed instead the steady-state theory, a model of dynamic equilibrium involving the continuous creation of matter throughout the universe. Although today it is generally accepted that the universe started some ten billion years ago in a big bang, many readers may not fully realize that this standard view owed much of its formation to the steady-state theory. By exploring the similarities and tensions between the theories, Kragh provides the reader with indispensable background for understanding much of today's commentary about our universe.